In 2016, the American Medical Association declared that gun violence in the U.S. is a public health crisis. Not just the mass shootings which make national headlines, but the daily violence that constitute the overwhelming majority of gun deaths- suicide, intimate partner violence, murder, police killings and even accidental shootings. The ripple effects impacts all of us, even if we are not directly experiencing the violence ourselves.

It's compounding another national crisis, that of adolescent mental health.  The CDC estimated that in 2020, the proportion of emergency room visits by adolescents seeking mental health care increased by 31 percent. But because of a lack of residential program beds, young patients are left to become “boarders” in emergency departments—kept in small, bare rooms or even in hospital hallways.

We speak with Dr. Megan Ranney, Academic Dean at the School of Public Health and a Professor of Emergency Medicine at Brown University, about how we got here and how a public health perspective on gun violence can help us find solutions.